Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work

“Everything you know about America—all the history, all the politics, all the lessons from all the economic indicators, all the arguments from the red states and the blue—is irrelevant when you are sitting in a coal mine, or staring at a radar screen showing thousands of airplanes flying at once, or wrangling five hundred pregnant Red Angus cows beneath a blazing hot desert sunrise.”

For Laskas, one of the benefits of this project was the way it made all the things we argue about in America seem unimportant. At a time when pundits and politicians seem to always ask what the average American wants without ever actually asking one of those average Americans, Laskas does just that, meeting them on their own terms, and allowing them to dictate the conversation and outcome.

“Coal, if it disappeared from the nation’s consciousness, never went away. This is America, and this is our fossil fuel, a $27.6 billion industry that employs nearly eighty thousand miners in twenty-six states. We are sitting on 25 percent of the world’s supply—the Saudi Arabia of coal! —and lately we’ve been grabbing it in record amounts, gorging on the black rock the Bush administration once called “freedom fuel.”

This is a brief foray into the political aspect of the jobs she is exploring in this section. However, Laskas makes no pronouncement about America’s use of coal, but instead just provides her reasoning for being interested in it.

“If anyone is gone, it’s us, the consumer. We forgot, or we lost touch, or we grew up with our lives already sanitized. We live over here and they live over there, and we have almost no access to a way of life that we are so unwittingly dependent on. What disturbed me was nothing I found so much as the nature of the experiment itself: How is it that our own neighbors are the stuff of anthropology? If that says anything about us, it’s definitely not flattering.”

This is Laskas’s response to people who did not know that coal mining or coal miners still existed. She argues here that we have lost touch with the people who are literally keeping the lights on, and the fact that we have lost touch with them says something has gone terribly wrong. The people with whom we share a country, a city, a neighborhood should not be studied like some lost Amazonian tribe, and we should be ashamed of not knowing more about them.

“Keep a low profile. Don’t ever make a scene. Not even if someone robs your tent; just hide your money better next time. If the family in the cabin next door is drunk and dancing and fighting and you can’t sleep, put earplugs in. If the rain comes and soaks your bedroll, get up and sleep in the car.”

Here Laskas indicates the way in which Urbano, and perhaps other migrant workers, perceive their position in American society. This is one example of the way in which Laskas often provides political commentary, indirect and subtle.

“Our current debate over how to control the southern border is really just a rehashed version of a very old one cycling over the reach of history. It’s a lively conversation about fairness and purity, about who belongs and who does not, and as a result, the people who pick our food are shamed into the shadows, nameless, mostly afraid, and certainly inconvenient to the experience of the satisfying first crunch and explosion of sugar that happens when we discover that, oh yes, this apple is awesome.”

This is an example of the background information that Laskas provides in each section, here focusing on the history of migrant workers. Laskas makes clear that the debate we have about undocumented workers is an old one, and it is a debate that dehumanizes the people who are doing the work that Americans don’t seem to want to do themselves.

“‘My premise is no human being is illegal,’ he said. ‘I call them undocumented workers or documented workers. It’s a silent world. Truly an underground society. There are not enough documented workers to fill the needs—not nearly enough. America is dependent on its undocumented workers, and yet they live in fear and hiding.’”

Laskas spends a great deal of time quoting Perez-Fables, which represents another way in which she provides political commentary without simply stating her own opinion. Furthermore, though Hidden America was published in 2012, the debate about undocumented workers continues, and this quote demonstrates the continued relevance of Laskas’s project.

“The men are just super. Oh, the men think this whole thing is about them. That is so cute. That is enough to make any Ben-Gal roll her head to one side and get teary with admiration. That is so sweet!”

Another example of Laskas speaking as one of the workers she interviews, here Laskas speaks as one of the cheerleaders. Laskas wants to demonstrate that these women have agency, that they have chosen to be cheerleaders, and this quote reflects the ways in which these women think about their own role. It is her attempt to allow these women to be subjects rather than objects.

“The cheerleader is pure. The one actor in our most celebrated entertainment empire who gets nothing tangible in return. She is nationalism at the most basic level, every Sunday embodying the American contradiction. She parades around on our biggest national stage wearing the characteristics that America loves about itself—loyal, devoted, confident, optimistic—and loathes: shallow, egocentric, materialistic, loud. She does not question her role and she does not stop smiling.”

Laskas was never truly able to understand why someone would want to be a cheerleader, though she is never less than respectful toward the women she interviewed. Here, she describes why she chose to explore the world of professional cheerleading. Unlike some of the other occupations, cheerleading is not necessary to the running of America. It is uniquely American, however, and here Laskas attempts to explain what makes it so American, claiming that it represents the best and worst of America.

“Controllers are choreographers, deciders, big-picture people with a knack for making split-second decisions based on physics, geometry, aerodynamics, and God-given guts. They’re perched above runways in little glass rooms and hidden in radar rooms, physically cut off from us and yet completely connected, or so we hope. We’d know them better if they did a bad job. The better they are, the more invisible they become.”

This quote reflects a paradox common to many of the professions Laskas explores: the average American never thinks about air traffic controllers unless something has gone wrong. The same is true of coal miners, truck drivers, gun store clerks—what all these professions have in common is a sense of invisibility, almost a desire for invisibility. However, by allowing these professions to become invisible, Laskas argues, we do a disservice not only to the men and women doing this work, but to ourselves as well.

“They hate everything else. They hate being treated like shit by the FAA, mandatory overtime, six days a week, no questions asked. They hate being exhausted. They hate spending so much time training young recruits, some of whom they feel to be lost causes. The dregs. They hate not being able to leave the building for lunch.”

This statement sums up the reasons why air-traffic controllers are miserable. It is not the job, but the conditions under which they work, and the way they feel they are being disrespected and ignored.

“The assault rifles stood stupid as pool sticks on the rack behind him; they were black and blocky, with long and longer magazines protruding erotically this way and that, and to my untrained eye they looked like the sort of thing an assassin might purchase on the black market and not, as it was, at a store beside a Lowe’s home improvement center, across the street from Sears.”

This quotation, from the beginning of the section on the gun store, encapsulates the two very different emotions Laskas feels throughout this piece. She describes the guns as “protruding erotically,” which represents the ways in which she finds guns alluring, quickly followed by the mention of an assassin, which represents her fears about gun violence.

“He said the whole point of guns was personal responsibility: taking care of yourself, your family, your neighborhood, your country. The more people there are with guns, the safer the society. “’That’s part of what has made this country great,” he said. “That we have the freedom to make sure we’re safe, that we have the means to protect ourselves, to be ready for even the occasional wackos that are out there.’”

Here, Laskas allows Richard Sprague to explain why he believes so strongly in the second amendment. He sincerely believes that it is what makes America not just unique, but “great,” and connects it that other American value, independence. What is important, he is arguing, is not that the government will provide protection, but that he is able to do so himself.

“I kept thinking about neighbors. You have this crazy family living next door. One day you go over with a pie, figuring if you just confront the crazy, you’ll understand it and find acceptance. Then you discover all this time they think you’re the crazy family. The more you try to explain yourself, the crazier you sound, and if you stay there long enough, you probably will be.”

This statement reflects the way in which Laskas was unable to find common ground with the people she met in Yuma. She uses the word neighbors here to represent the opposing sides of the gun debate. Notice that she does not use the word family, she is not claiming a deep connection. Instead, they are people we must deal with, but not reconcile with or love. Furthermore, these neighbors cannot even communicate, and their attempts to communicate only make them seem “crazier.” In this way, Laskas seems to argue, there is no reconciling these two sides.

“Donnell Brown wears ironed creases on his Wranglers, a starched plaid shirt with long sleeves, and a white hat with the brim cupped obediently up—not some floppy, haphazard shape like East Texas cowboys wear (cowboys who, sadly, don’t seem to know any better). The spurs on his boots bear his initials, but he does not wear jingle bobs—those dangling silver beads Arizona cowboys wear (cowboys who are embarrassingly all flash and pizzazz).”

Laskas uses subtle humor to describe Donnell Brown, comparing him to different kinds of cowboys from different parts of Texas. This also sets up Donnell Brown to be depicted as a “real” cowboy, which is the way that Laskas portrays him throughout, a throwback to a long-gone era, when things were simpler, when raising cattle required only land not labs.

“It is a stupid question, to a cowboy. It would be like asking why a rattlesnake doesn’t go off and be a coyote instead. It’s who you are. It has nothing to do with money. (And listen—cowboys don’t do grease, or machines.) A cowboy is more like a poet: driven by a passion as old as the hills and the dirt, and one that has nothing whatsoever to do with the world’s economy. He will find a way to live the life no matter what. He will talk of individual freedom and America. He will understand that a man’s character is shaped by the landscape in which he rides—or doesn’t ride. He will smell the dirt and escape to his essence. He will look out into the tawny range under an endless sky and ponder everlasting life. He will listen to cowboy freedom songs on the radio and thank America. He will look forward to meeting Jesus. He will wake up each day at dawn, just like the songs preach, saddle up his horse, and ride.”

This is another example of the way in which Laskas slips between narrating the text in the first person and embodying one of the people she has met. This is also reminiscent of the ways in which she described the cheerleaders: she cannot understand why anyone would want to do this job, considering the low pay and the lack of clear benefits, so she does not attempt to understand it. Instead, she returns to the idea that the problem isn’t with the cowboy (or cheerleader) but with the person asking the question. You either get it, she seems to say, or you don’t.

“‘You know what time is for?’ TooDogs asks me. ‘What it’s for?’ I ask. ‘It’s to keep everything from happening all at once,’ he says. ‘It’s something to remember when your stuff gets cluttered,’ he says. ‘You know, when the stuff in your head gets cluttered?’ He says his stuff has been pretty cluttered this hitch. A tangle of thoughts—family, money, work—clogging up his mind. He says it’s no big deal. He says it’s all workable.”

TooDogs’s meditation on time reflects not only the complicated person he was, but the way in which he and Laskas connected. TooDogs is not simply doing a job, but actively trying to make himself and the people he works with the best he can be. It also reflects TooDogs’s habit of deflecting concern. Before Laskas can even ask what these worries are, about “family, money, work,” TooDogs has already deemed it “no big deal” and “workable.” Laskas hints that it is TooDogs’s unwillingness to go deeper into these worries that separates him from his family, both his actual family, and the one he has created on the rig.

“Crude. Petroleum. We process it into gasoline, asphalt, plastic, fertilizer. We fill up our cars with it, drive on roads made of it. We use it to make all those soda bottles and all those Baggies holding our lunches, the foam in our mattresses, the padding in our running shoes. The vegetables we eat are protected from bugs by it. We travel because of it, drink out of it, sleep on it, wear it, eat it, whine about how much it costs, argue about it, hate needing it, love it, kill for it. It is our most ubiquitous natural resource, the juice that made the past century possible.”

Here Laskas returns to the idea of excess in combination with providing some background information on what we use oil for. Although most people understand that it is the way we power our vehicles, many readers were probably surprised to know that our clothes, our bedding, and other products are made out of oil. Much as with the section on the coal mine, however, Laskas makes no claim here about whether we should be doing all these things with oil. Instead, she merely presents the information to the reader, allowing them to make of it what they will.

“A lot of people I meet on the Slope have a history they’re running from. They’re running from families that don’t work, that they can’t make work, that fail them, that they fail. Kung Fu has been in and out of jail more times than he remembers. Stubbs, a recovering drunk, keeps finding and losing the Lord. Willie, one of the young ones who rarely speaks, has a mom at home who beats him. Alaska has always been a place people flee to; the Slope is a place you flee to after you have fled to Alaska. A last chance. For some, it’s redemption. For others, salvation.”

Laskas provides background information about the workers on the oil rig, noting that many of them come from troubled backgrounds. TooDogs himself came from an abusive environment and lost himself in drugs and alcohol for many years. Many of the other men working here have similar backgrounds, and the rig represents a safe haven for many of them, not just because it is isolated, even by Alaska’s standards, but because TooDogs accepts them all as they are, with no judgment, provides them with stability, and helps them gain the skills they need to be successful.

“A trailer full of Clorox bleach, ketchup and mustard packets, mail, oxygen tanks, caskets, fireworks, plastic eating utensils (‘that come in the pack with the napkin, salt, and pepper’), tissue, paper towels, cardboard, huge rolls of paper, books, sales inserts for newspapers, bundles of shredded paper and aluminum cans, paint, cat litter, dog food, toys, GARBAGE (‘Yes, actual stinky trash’), brand-new garbage cans, TVs, DVDs, camcorders, Whirlpool products, plant pots, military equipment (‘ammunition, tank parts, and wooden crates’), glass freezer coolers, oil, batteries, hydrochloric acid, white powder calcium, liquid chemical solvents and solutions, aluminum ingots, powder coating, fifty-gallon drums (‘empty and full of car-wash liquid’), totes (also empty and full), cleaning products, plastic beads that are melted down to make bottles, all kinds of auto parts […].”

Here Laskas uses one of her favorite structures, the list, this time to give the reader an idea of all the things that long-distance truck drivers like Sputter haul. The items range from the essential, like chemicals and auto parts, to the non-essential, like plastic utensils and DVDs. Again, the list format allows Laskas to inform the reader of the ways in which they rely on these men and women and is at the same time another commentary on American consumerism and excess

“When I think about the women of hidden America, all the labor that traditionally falls on the shoulders of women, I think they are an enormous army of soldiers hidden in camouflage. The caretakers, the nannies, the maids, the sisters and the surrogate sisters, the mothers and the surrogate mothers, all those people tending hearts.”

This statement comes after Laskas meets Sputter’s sister, Elaine, who works with the elderly. By including this, Laskas highlights the way in which most of Hidden America is populated by men. She has made them visible in this text but has not done that in the same way for women, who often labor in unglamorous, even boring jobs. Taking care of the elderly does not hold the same thrill as descending four miles into the earth, being responsible for thousands of people in the nation’s airports, or constructing the perfect bull. Nonetheless, Laskas acknowledges here, we are just as dependent on these women. By ending it with the idea that women are “tending hearts,” however, Laskas falls into the very stereotypes that she has tried so hard to avoid throughout the rest of the text: men take care of the physical world, women take care of the emotional one.

“If I could have read the words on my paper out loud, a tiny memory—her downstairs painting, me upstairs writing, the two of us meeting in the kitchen for tuna fish sandwiches, comparing notes on the anxiety of the blank canvas and the anxiety of the blank page—I could have shown people who she and I were together, and apparently I needed the witness. The memory of wanting to read, and not getting to read, is relentless as a toothache.”

Laskas explains one of the things that bothered her about her mother’s funeral: that she was unable to say what she wanted to say and feels that now no one will truly understand the relationship she had with her mother. By describing it as “relentless as a toothache,” Laskas indicates to the reader how much this has hurt her, but also that the hurt is constant and deep.

“If all the truckers woke up one day and decided to stop driving, Walmart’s 617 million square feet across 3,800 stores would soon empty. The 46 million chickens, 175,000 cows, and 443,000 pigs that Tyson slaughters each week would sit stranded on some highway. Amazon’s $34 billion worth of stuff would remain in warehouses, and we would continue to pump 378 million gallons of gasoline each day until the pumps went dry, and then we would all have to stay home and America would grind to a halt.”

Through this statement, Laskas attempts to get the reader to understand just how crucial long-distance truck drivers are to America. Though they may not produce energy or food, without them we would not be able to get those raw materials to where they are needed. Again, she also provides a subtle commentary on American consumerism, here by mentioning Amazon and Walmart, two retailers often criticized for the way they treat their employees and the ways in which they contribute to pollution.

“We tend not to think about the fact that every time we throw a moist towelette or an empty Splenda packet or a Little Debbie snack cake wrapper into the trash can, there are people involved, a whole chain of people charged with the preposterously complicated task of making that thing vanish—which it never really does. A landfill is not something we want to bother thinking about, and if we do, we tend to blame the landfill itself for sitting there stinking like that, for marring the landscape, for offending a sanitized aesthetic. We are human, highly evolved creatures impatient with all things stinky and gooey and gross—remarkably adept at forgetting that a landfill would be nothing, literally nothing, without us.”

Once again, Laskas wants to shock the reader into understanding the enormity of one of the occupations she is exploring, here the landfill. She criticizes Americans’ willful ignorance, their ability to ignore the existence of the landfill and what it means, only noticing it as an eyesore. She points out once again our culpability in creating places like landfills and tries to get the reader to understand the importance of knowing where their trash goes and how it does not, in fact, “vanish.” This reminds the reader of the spoiled child that Laskas began the text with, and the importance of understanding how all of this works to prevent us from becoming entitled and complacent.